The Alaska Department of Fish and Game ordered an emergency closure of the Haines area moose hunt this week, citing concerns about exceeding the department’s management objective of 20-25 bulls.
As of Wednesday, 24 moose had been taken in the Haines area’s Tier II subsistence hunt, two of which were sublegal. Of the 22 legal moose, four met the spike-fork configuration, 12 had three or more brow tines, and six had racks more than 50 inches wide.
The hunt will close a week earlier than the traditional hunting season, at 11:59 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 1, instead of Oct. 7.
The Haines area management unit was last closed by emergency order in 1993 and again in 1994 due to low populations, Fish and Game wildlife biologist Carl Koch said. Before that closure, the Haines hunt was an “any bull” hunt, meaning any bull could be legally harvested.
Koch said the decision to issue the emergency order was made for a number of reasons, including a lack of reliable data. Due to scant snow last winter, the department’s aerial survey yielded results of questionable accuracy. (Snow makes it easier to spot a moose from the air.).
The survey counted 147 moose last year, but Koch said the department is “not confident” in that number and it should be considered a minimum count only. The 2013 aerial survey counted 163 moose; the 2012 survey counted 177.
“Although the department estimates the moose population in (the Haines area) to be 250-350 moose, poor survey conditions due to lack of snow have been factors in the lower survey numbers since 2012,” Koch said.
Koch said the department also was concerned that so many animals were shot soon after the hunt opened on Sept. 15.
“We reached 17 bulls in the first week. By the time we decided to do the closure, there were 23 bulls taken,” Koch said. “We are being conservative because we don’t have good numbers and the harvest was high and we want to meet our management goals in the future.”
This year’s numbers compare to a total harvest of 22 animals during the 2014 hunt, and totals of 19 each year during 2011 and 2012. The 2014 harvest was 26.
Low numbers of yearling bulls were harvested in 2014 and as of Wednesday, only four yearlings had been taken this year. Low numbers of calf moose detected during surveys also suggest the potential for low recruitment into the population, Koch said.
Koch said the low number of yearling bulls has surprised him, both in the Haines area and the management area around Wrangell and Petersburg. “You’d think with a mild winter there would be a decent number of those younger animals,” he said.
Resident Don Turner, who has lived in Haines for nearly 50 years and harvested his first moose in 1968, missed out on bagging a bull this year, though his son Donnie succeeded before the emergency order was issued.
Turner said he likes going out hunting, but is glad Fish and Game is being conservative in its management of the moose population. In the 1970s and 1980s, looser management practices led to overharvesting, he said.